2 ESSENTIALS OF KTEA™-3 AND WIAT®-III ASSESSMENT

the third editions of the WIAT and KTEA are deserving of a complete up-to-date book devoted to their administration, scoring, interpretation, and clinical applications. Essentials of KTEA-3 and WIAT-III Assessment provides that up-to-date information and includes rich information beyond what is available in the tests’ manuals. Digital administration and scoring through the Q-interactive system is the focus of a chapter designed to benefit new, novice, and even experienced Q-interactive users. An entire chapter is devoted to illustrative case reports to exemplify how the results of the KTEA-3 and WIAT-III can be integrated with an entire battery of tests to yield a thorough understanding of a student’s academic functioning. In a chapter devoted to clinical applications of the tests, the following topics are discussed: the integration of the KTEA-3 and WIAT-III with tests of cognitive ability, focusing on the conceptual and theoretical links between tests, and the assessment of special populations, including specific learning disabilities (under IDEA 2004) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or hearing impairments. Expanding on the topic of learning disabilities, the identification of common reading disability subtypes using the KTEA-3 and WIAT-III is discussed. Gender di erences in writing are also addressed. Key information on using the WIAT-III and KTEA-3 to monitor a student’s response to intervention further enriches the chapter on clinical applications.

PURPOSES AND USES OF ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

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The WIAT-III and KTEA-3 are used for many reasons, including diagnosing achievement, identifying processes, analyzing errors, making placement decisions and planning programs, measuring academic progress, evaluating interventions or programs, and conducting research. Some pertinent applications of these tests are described next.

Diagnosing Achievement

The WIAT-III and KTEA-3 provide the following types of information for diagnosing academic achievement:

•A general estimate of academic achievement, which may include the WIAT-III Total Achievement composite, the KTEA-3 (Comprehensive or Brief Form) Academic Skills Battery composite, or the Brief Achievement composite from the KTEA-3 Brief.

•An analysis of a student’s academic strengths and weaknesses in reading, mathematics, spelling, written expression, and oral language (listening and speaking). This assessment data may be used as part of a comprehensive assessment for identifying a learning disability.

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•Investigation of related factors that may a ect academic achievement, such as Phonological Awareness, Naming Facility (RAN), and Associational Fluency on the KTEA-3 and Early Reading Skills (includes items for assessing phonological awareness), Oral Word Fluency, Expressive Vocabulary, and Receptive Vocabulary on the WIAT-III.

Identifying Processes

Pairwise subtest comparisons on both the WIAT-III and KTEA-3 allow examiners to better understand how students comprehend language (Reading Comprehension versus Listening Comprehension) and express their ideas (Written Expression versus Oral Expression).

Analyzing Errors

The KTEA-3 provides a detailed quantitative summary of the types or patterns of errors a student makes on 10 of the 19 KTEA-3 subtests, including Letter & Word Recognition, Nonsense Word Decoding, Phonological Processing, Spelling, Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, Written Expression, Oral Expression, Math Concepts & Applications, and Math Computation. Tracking error patterns can help examiners plan appropriate remedial111111111 instruction specifically targeting the di culties that a student displays.

The WIAT-III provides skills analysis capabilities that also yield a detailed quantitative summary of the types of errors a student makes on seven of the 16 subtests. This information helps examiners evaluate a student’s error patterns and skill strengths and weaknesses. Each subtest includes sets of items that measure a specific skill or set of skills. Analyzing the student’s errors through the skills analysis yields information that can then be used in the design of an instructional plan or specific intervention for a student.

The KTEA-3 and WIAT-III score reports accessible through Q-global or Q-interactive provide detailed error analysis assessment data to summarize the skills a student needs to be taught and provide recommendations for teaching those skills. In addition, the new Q-global Intervention Guide for LD Subtypes takes into account the student’s pattern of performance across cognitive, language, and achievement areas to identify potential learning disability subtypes and make recommendations about how to tailor an intervention approach. The recommendations from this Intervention Guide consider a student’s areas of relative strength when remediating relative weaknesses.

4 ESSENTIALS OF KTEA™-3 AND WIAT®-III ASSESSMENT

Making Placement Decisions and Planning Programs

The WIAT-III and KTEA-3 norm-referenced scores, along with the error analysis information, indicate an examinee’s approximate instructional level. These results can inform decisions regarding appropriate educational placement as well as appropriate accommodations or curricular adjustments for new student admissions or transfers from other educational settings. The information can also assist in the development of an individualized education program (IEP) based on a student’s needs. For adolescents and adults, the results can help inform decisions regarding general equivalency diploma (GED) preparation, appropriate vocational training, or job placement decisions.

Measuring Academic Progress

As a general guideline, wait about 8 months to 1 year before readministering the same form of an achievement test. For the WIAT-III, academic progress can be measured by retesting after enough time has passed between administrations, taking into consideration any potential practice e ects.

The two parallel forms of the KTEA-3 Comprehensive Form allow an examiner to measure a student’s academic progress while ensuring that changes in performance are not due to the student’s familiarity with the battery content. The KTEA-3 Brief

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(which is identical to the core battery of Comprehensive Form B) may also be alternated with the KTEA-3 Comprehensive Form A to reduce practice e ects when measuring progress over time.

Reporting growth scale values (GSVs) is highly recommended when evaluating an examinee’s performance across administrations. GSVs and GSV charts are available on both the KTEA-3 and the WIAT-III to facilitate a comparison of performance over time.

Evaluating Interventions or Programs

The WIAT-III and KTEA-3 can provide information about the e ectiveness of specific academic interventions or programs. For example, one or more of the composite scores could demonstrate the e ectiveness of a new reading program within a classroom or examine the relative performance levels between classrooms using di erent math programs.

Conducting Research

The WIAT-III and the KTEA-3 Comprehensive Form are reliable, valid measures of academic achievement that are suitable for use in many research designs. Indeed, a brief search of the literature yielded hundreds of articles that utilized the WIAT or the